April 29, 2017

9:00 am to 2:00 pm

We will hold co-sponsor trainings once a quarter and we will be requiring all core co-sponsoring team members (minimum of 8 people) to complete the training before we can assign you a family.

If some or all of your team are unable to make this training, let us know. We may be able to set up a few make-up sessions, since this is our first go-around, or you might be able to attend our January training instead. We will likely only resettle 3-4 families at the most in this first quarter, anyway, so not all teams need to attend this first session.

Between now and then, we have some homework for you to do:

1. Meet all together as a team, if you have not done so already, and designate a team leader. This point person will be our main line of communication with your team.

2. Begin discussing how your group wants to divide up the following required activities: furnishing the apartment, buying groceries, driving refugees to appointments, practicing English with the refugees, conducting cultural orientation and hosting the refugees for meals/events. We will go over all these in detail at the training, but for now, it would be helpful for you to start discussing internally how you will divide these tasks up.

3. Have your team leader sign up for the training on our Volunteer Website by April 1st, Please let us know the names of all those who will be attending and the name of your co-sponsoring organization. Canopy will provide lunch and refreshments as part of the training, so we need to know accurate numbers.

4. Begin fundraising. We put in place a requirement (after we recruited all of you) that all co-sponsoring teams commit to fundraising $1,100 for Canopy to assist with the resettlement costs. Because this was not in place when y’all committed, it’s not required of you. However, it would certainly be helpful to us if you would be able to help us with fundraising. This will give you something tangible to work on as a team even now before refugees begin arriving.